


Hold Onto This Moment

by Liana Mir (scribblemyname)



Series: Kingdoms and Thorn [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Consensual Sex, Established Relationship, F/M, Lazy/Gentle Sex, Morning Sex, Spies & Assassins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 13:53:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6568864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/Liana%20Mir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What do you want?"</p><p>To go back to sleep. To not have to get up in an hour and go visit old friends with the intention to kill them. To hold onto this moment for all it was worth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold Onto This Moment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreyTabbyCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyTabbyCat/gifts).



"Come in, Flame." The facility director waved him in and rubbed her temple absently with one hand.

Flame came in warily, taking in the spread of papers spilled all over her desk, the computer screen dark with a blue flashing light on the edge proving it was on. He didn't much care for his director but if she didn't like an assignment, he usually liked it less.

When he was fully inside, she pressed both palms to the desk and looked at him. "It's an assassination."

He didn't react right away. He'd killed, they both knew it, and all of his team members had their own count of confirmed and unconfirmed kills, but none of them were assassins either.

"No." He settled into parade stance and waited for her reaction.

She just sighed, another bad sign. "It's your old cover. The target is Antoinyéh Basch. You remember the pianist?"

Flame frowned, thinking back to an assignment to protect, not harm. "Targeted by terrorists because of his former work in—"

"Genetics," she finished and tossed him a file. "He's in deep with other governments developing a program similar to this one."

She waited a beat as he felt his eyes widen. Creating operatives with their abilities came at a high cost. For every successful fire elemental or probability sensitive at least three to seven more potentials died.

"Children are dying."

His fist clenched almost before he noticed to restrain his reactions. "I can do it." It made him want to swallow down bile, but it wasn't a question if he had the cold or the willingness to do whatever it took to protect his own team from assignments like this.

But the director saw right through him. They'd worked together long enough. "I'll get you an assassin from another team on loan if that's what this is about. But I need this to be a two-person mission, and I need you to keep your hands and cover clean."

He bit down the retort that wanted to come out at that. He'd been in this business since he was a child himself. He could keep his cover clean and still bury a body in the end. "Blade," he demanded instead, naming an accomplished assassin from another team.

"What?" He'd surprised her, caught her flatfooted with the request.

Blade was ranked second on his _rival_ team.

He repeated it slowly. "I want Blade."

She sat back and stared at him. "I'm not sure Strike will let her go."

Flame just shot her a look of disgust. "Strike will not ignore orders."

She might fight them, manipulate them, or barter them around to something she liked better, but if it didn't harm her team, she'd obey them. Flame should know. They were both ranked first.

* * *

"You asked for me?" Her dry tone startled him out of mission review.

Flame had ordered his second to keep an eye on their own team to her scoffing approval and buried himself in the documents the director had left him with. And how Blade had managed to not only sneak up on him but in his own room was a mystery he'd never been able to put together.

A faint, barely noticeable smile tipped her mouth over into sweetness, and it had been too long since he'd heard that low alto with the hint of throatiness no one else seemed to have. Small things, tiny things. She leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, the rest of her face a mask of indifference, and anyone would have thought she was not pleased at his request, even her own leader.

"I need an assassin, precise, good with distance work," he replied as dryly.

Distance wasn't her best work, but her best was phenomenal beyond belief. He could settle for what she'd call a job decently done. It was better than he'd get from any other he had something like a working rapport with.

* * *

She wasn't impressed by the wayside hotel room, Flame noted by the flat look of her mouth and the faint disgust in her eyes.

"Low profile," he commented, in defense if he'd admit it to himself, but he wasn't anxious to admit she'd pulled a blade on _him_ from time to time.

"Broken blinds?" She ran one finger along the bent patch on one window. "Security 101."

"No one's looking here," he reminded her. "They don't even know there's a target."

The man shouldn't have been on anyone's radar and Flame had called up like an old friend and planned coffee in an open location with terrible, terrible sightlines and thick crowds, an assassin's nightmare if they weren't a probability sensitive like Blade, able to pick the one action out of thousands that would lead to a desired result.

Still she sniffed and left the window to shoot pointed looks of complaint about the furniture and bedding next. "Flame Bright," she chided, "I used to think you had taste."

He smiled at the full name he'd gone by before his second had shortened it. It was a not unpleasant reminder that Blade had always known him and better than anyone gave her credit for. "I've slept in worse."

Blade sighed. "As have I. But not by choice." But she let it go, let him go over their briefs one more time as she slipped into night clothes, then she looked over the briefs herself as he did the same.

It wasn't sexual when they crawled into the same bed and she threw off the blanket on account of his fire-related high body temperature. It wasn't sexual, but it certainly wasn't platonic finally being able to hold her close again and sleep.

* * *

Morning came a little too soon, cold light dancing against Blade's face through those cheap, broken blinds. She stirred against the warmth of Flame Bright around her, frowning at being awake.

She _felt_ him wake more than anything else. A faint edge of tension entered his body, but his breath stayed even and his limbs heavy against her.

Tired already of pretension—and she hated the sort of role playing missions he pulled off like breathing—she rolled over and nestled her face into his neck to kissed him softly.

He shifted. Hands came up to brush fingers gently through her hair. He tucked those same fingers under her chin and pulled her up enough to kiss her properly.

Blade wasn't really _that_ interested in waking up all the way. She pressed her palm to his chest and pushed back. She didn't even mind the faintly amused expression on his face as he settled back against the pillow.

"Next time," she said dryly, "I'm picking the room."

Flame Bright's chuckle was soft in her ear.

She let herself cuddle in close as if to go back to sleep, but she knew better than to think she'd make it back to unconsiousness any time this morning, and her opportunities for more than cuddling with him were rare. Strike never went out of her way to allow them, being rather unfond of Flame in the first place, and even less so when she discovered he'd stolen even a small portion of Blade's affections.

"You ever think you and Strike could get along?" Blade asked casually as she slid her hand lower over his chest and stomach, and she always forgot how nice their constant training made that feeling. His entire body was just the right amount of honed muscle.

Flame Bright huffed a soft laugh. "Rival teams. Maybe if we stopped going back and forth in the rankings."

"And you'd never be content to lose," she concluded. It couldn't be helped really, for all she sighed, wishing it could be. It'd be nice if things were different.

But she could still touch him, run her fingers over warm skin, and wonder to herself why he had to sleep with pants. Not that she could talk. His hand was tracing absent patterns over the back of her thin nightdress as he nuzzled the top of her head.

"Blade," he murmured right in her ear, so his breath was warm and ticklish against her, but it also made want dance along on her nerve endings and in her stomach right beneath where his hand had settled. "What do you want?"

To go back to sleep. To not have to get up in an hour and go visit old friends with the intention to kill them. To hold onto this moment for all it was worth, but without having to do too much work.

"I'm sleepy," she settled on saying, hopefully a good compromise on telling him point blank what kind of sex she was up for.

But she propped herself up on one elbow long enough to slip out of her nightdress and toss it out of the warm cocoon of their covers. She shot him one raised eyebrow look, then rolled over to snuggle back against him, letting the unnatural heat of his body warm her back up fast.

His breath felt shaky, his hands hesitant, hovering near her hips. She pressed them down against her skin and waited for his reaction.

A quiet moment stretched a little long, but then he rubbed a warm circle over one hip and slid his other hand up over her rib cage, just slow enough to tease and spark pleasure.

Everything about it was lazy and slow: the hazy way he looked to her as he pushed her shoulder back to kiss her mouth, the way their fingers rubbed slow, slow, random patterns over each other's bodies where they were most sensitive. She took her time getting to him, first enjoying the sensation of feeling his arms beneath her hands as he did most of the moving in a casual exploration of her body.

No new scars along her rib cage, an angry bruise on her inner thigh he took the time to press before she elbowed him to look elsewhere, new muscle on her own arms from a new element of training she'd taken up, but still the same person, the same Blade whose breath caught whenever he tickled her ribs or raked fingertips and blunt nails in a circle over her stomach or cupped her breasts in his hands and scraped at their undersides, and in any other circumstance she'd push back and turn the tables and _wreck_ him, but this was good and pleasant and she stretched her neck and arched her back and leaned into every touch because this was Flame and he still wanted her and treated her like something precious.

She was already wet and every time she pressed back with her hips, she could feel the hardness of his own arousal.

"Flame." Her voice broke a little saying it, and that lit both irritation and a strange pleasure inside her. She reached back to run her thumb over his skin right above the waist of his pants. "Off."

There was that soft laugh again, the one she always blamed on their profession and handlers. She'd never heard him laugh out loud, for all she'd often heard that low amusement.

She dug her nails in, a pointed hint to get on with it, and he pulled away. She listened to the rustle of fabric, felt the shifting weight on the bed, then there he was again, pulling her close, and it was all bare skin and strong muscle.

Better. She rolled over to look at him.

He had always been beautiful, dark hair falling into his eyes just a bit, just enough to make her reach up and brush it away, eyes so dark and full of nameless, painful history she could stare into them forever. She ran her hands over his shoulders, reached down and scraped her own light trail down to his erection. He hissed, head falling back to the pillow.

She danced her fingers lightly up and down its length, smiling at the impatient way he pulled her on top of him and the strained need on his face. But she wasn't interested in letting him rush her, more intent on exploring thighs and cock and rubbing her hand gently over his balls as she did her own catalog of new scars with her gaze.

 _"Blade."_ The impatience in his voice had an edge to it.

She flicked his shoulder chidingly. "Spoilsport."

But she took the hint and moved upward, so he could slide inside her, and she hissed a little herself. He gave her a moment to adjust, then pushed up with more gentleness than they usually bothered with.

It felt good and took forever, but she liked the rhythm, the slow pace, the way he kept rubbing those circles on her hips as he stared at her like she was the answer to all the questions they would never dare to ask. She liked leaning down and whispering his name and kissing him heatedly as fire sparked a little too close to actual skin, and she was hot, hot, hot inside and outside.

He wouldn't hurt her, but she liked the reminder that it was because of who _she_ was, not who he was.

Her orgasm took her by surprise, a sudden urgent note overtaking the comfort as it crashed through her. She gasped and leaned into him, letting him push a little harder, a little faster, a little longer, then there. He groaned quietly but didn't move or say anything.

They'd have to get up soon, go back out to kill in cold blood while Flame Bright called the man friend. But not yet. Not quite yet.

"You should ask for me more often," Blade said lightly.

He laughed softly but did not disagree.


End file.
